Yahoo Sports To celebrate that was incredible: Taylor on late Liverpool winner
Gareth Taylor says Khadija ‘Bunny’ Shaw’s dramatic winner in our 2-1 success over Liverpool provided ‘great moment’ for the Club’s coaches, players and supporters.
The Jamaican slammed home in the 92nd-minute to secure three points on Merseyside and extend our unbeaten start to the season to seven straight matches.
Having trailed at Anfield heading into the break, Shaw equalised just before the hour mark with a fine header which squirmed into the bottom corner.
But as the minutes ticked down and past the 90th minute, the spoils looked likely to be shared before the 27-year-old sparked euphoric celebrations when collecting Laia Aleixandri’s pass in stoppage time and rifling into the top corner.
The win over Matt Beard’s side moved us back to the WSL’s summit and Taylor believes the thrilling triumph will spread further confidence among his players.
“Yeah [it provides] huge pleasure, it’s a great moment, we celebrated that really well because we wanted it so bad,” he explained.
“It’s really nice to celebrate with the team at the end and full credit to the girls to back it up with another result and after what we did in midweek is super impressive.
“It was brilliant [support from the visiting fans]. Great scenes and obviously we’re close to them here on the touchline and I really enjoyed that today.
“I’ve been feeling a little bit under the weather but what a tonic that was. To celebrate that was incredible.
“It spreads confidence throughout the team and there’s an argument to say we’ve done that more with the amount of play we had.
“I felt we needed to sharpen up a little bit in the second half and play a little bit quicker than we were because Liverpool were making it really difficult.
“I think it’s a great to reinforce the performance in some of the good stuff we did against a difficult opponent by taking the three points.”
City became the first team to better Liverpool in the WSL this term thanks to the epic victory at Anfield.
Beard’s side had recorded two draws and one win heading into the encounter, and they showed why they’ve been a hard side to beat so far in 2024/25 by making us work incredibly hard for three points.
The hosts took the lead late in the first half through Olivia Smith’s drilled effort from range and defended heroically throughout.
But Taylor says the Blues patience and sticking to our principles paid dividends by full-time.
He added: “We anticipated a back four but you could quickly see it was a back five and that allowed us to dominate possession in front of that but we found when we got into the wings with Lauren [Hemp] and Mary [Fowler] they were always in one-versus-two situations.
“We were never really able to isolate them. In order to do that we needed to move it from one side to the other way really quickly and maybe move it back again.
“Sometimes the girls showed good patience with that and sometimes we didn’t. Maybe tried to go through the middle a little more, but fair play.
“When we talk about those spaces, the second goal, the space opened up in their defence and Bunny – a great pass from Laia – and Bunny does what she does best.”
